lonetechie.com
one techie, trying to make a difference
My first thoughts on Dojo
Apr 29th
There is a little known (to me) javascript library out there called Dojo I dove into this week. Basically it is a massive open source javascript library focused on UI and AJAX. So visiting their website(very nicely done btw) and checking out some of the examples I was pretty impressed with what could be done pretty easily. My goal during the whole process was to build a drag and drop + resizable widget which is useful for some projects I’m working on. After a few days of tinkering I have learned a lot and see that advantages of Dojo. It can be painfully simple to do common task using Dojo, although you need to get your hands a bit dirty if you need additional functionality out of a widget. I was unsuccessful in getting my widget working without modifying the resizable widgets source. I guess I’ve made new widget now altogether.
To date my main criticism of dojo is the documentation. I’m not going to go so far to say there isn’t any, but it is really lacking for someone that wants to do more than just the simple examples they have shown. The book of dojo is a nice run broad rundown of things while the most useful part of it is the examples you get when you download the scripts. On the dojo website they mention a few books out now, so I may jump on that.
It is also worth noting I have been trying to get this same functionality out of Microsoft’s ASP.net Ajax with minimal success. I have found using a .net update panel combined with the ASP.net ajax controls can be a significant headache if you want to extend the basic features even minimally. One would assume the onResize event invoked by a resize control would be able to trigger an update panel, think again.
Microsoft IIS blamed for mass SQL injection attacks
Apr 28th
So in the past week slashdot has made two post over this including many other sites. Apparently there is a bot running the net attempting sql injection on a specific brand of sites. Nothing to write home about correct? This one is nothing particularly special in that if your asp page is open to sql injection and you run MSSQL server you are open to the bot. The bot floods the database with a specific javascript include which runs malicious code when it is pulled from the database.
What is particularly annoying with all of this is that bad coding practices are the root cause for all of this. You have sites like slashdot blatantly spinning the issue around on Microsoft. Sorry, I have criticisms of MS just like everybody else, but this is flat our preventable by sanitizing your queries. Instead of writing a sensationalist post spouting big 6 digit numbers and throwing around the word vulnerability, how about trying to understand the problem. When I first saw this article being a webmaster I naturally wanted to find out why the REAL issue was instead of wading through a page of spin.
If you want the REAL story on what this is all about read this well written explanation of the problem.
ASPimage to Imageglue Wrapper class
Mar 22nd
Well, I have talked about it for 3 weeks now, here it is. I am releasing my Imageglue wrapper class for ASPimage.dll. This is near complete replacement for aspimage.dll. Please read my previous post on the issue regarding W3wp.exe and dllhost.exe crashing.
If you are using ASPimage in a production environment I highly recommend the superior component from websupergoo.com called imageglue. This wrapper allows you to use your aspimage code and use imageglue as the driving component instead.
I have not had a lot of time to work on this. It has most of the corresponding functions you need to use aspimage. If there continues to be a lot of interest in this I will look into completing it. This code is in production right now and has generated about 3,000 images already!
Javascript 2.0
Mar 22nd
Jeremy Martin posted up a nice run down of the proposed Javascript 2.0 spec:
Well I suppose it’s an undeniable fact about us programmer-types – every now and then we just can’t help but get excited about something really nerdy. For me right now, that is definitely JavaScript 2.0. I was just taking a look at the proposed specifications and I am really, truly excited about what we have coming.
This is a pretty big deal all in all. Web 2.0 and AJAX type sites are all driven with javascript. Looking over some of the proposed additions it should be something to look forward to!
AspImage to ImageGlue conversion done
Mar 7th
So after a good hard week of coding on my own time. I am happy to say our primary website at work has been converted from ASPimage over to Imageglue. Without going into specifics this is the core of the site, the image generation IS the site. After my intial post on the issue I had written a complete wrapper class in ASP to hopefully make the switch over in one line of code. Unfortunatly that was not possible since one particular function in imageglue was not terribly efficient. I was able to make one further refinement and bring the image generation time up to an acceptable point.
It has now been 2 days since the switch over and knock on wood thousands of images have been generated successfully under imageglue and the w3wp.exe has not crashed!
Next up a personal site of mine is in the same situation. However I was able to make my wrapper work with it on swapping only one line of code. I will be posting the wrapper shortly. It needs some commenting and general cleaned up a bit before I put it infront of the world.